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No matter how well prepared you think you are, winter still takes you by surprise. During the summer, I had taken delivery of a load of new gang slats to replace their old single predecessors, which I had put into the first slatted house I had built way back in the year of the collapse in cattle prices in 1974. When I was ordering the new gang slats they asked me by way of conversation how long the single slats were in place.
When I told them, they understandably replied that if everyone had kept their slats as long, they would have been out of business years ago. Anyway, the company concerned are still very much still in business and as efficient and helpful as I remember them all those years ago.
However, handling and laying gang slats is easier said than done, which of course is why I kept putting off the actual job. As I mentioned before, I had bought a tracked digger during the last recession and it has proved its weight in gold. It has a hook and excellent hydraulics and when fitted with a good towing rope, it easily lifted the gang slats and we gently eased them, one by one, into place for the entire length of the shed.
The job is now done and ready to take cattle. What I do with the old single slats is not clear. Presumably, some of them can be used to repair or strengthen a lane or roadway around the place. Their commercial value seems to be nil.
On the crop side, the mild weather has certainly provided ideal conditions for growth, but the excellent growth is not visible on some of the headlands, especially where there is oilseed rape. I can only attribute this to compaction in last year’s very difficult weather. We never got a chance to subsoil properly. The only time the weather was ideal was in the spring and early summer when, of course, the crops were in the fields while subsoiling after harvest would have probably smeared the ground rather than shattered any pan that seems to have formed. I will get another view on what is the best approach.
The weather has also helped the weeds with volunteer beans already clearly visible in the seed wheat and spring oat plants appearing in the commercial wheat. Following last year’s weed control problems, herbicide choice and timing is going to be top of the agenda.
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